KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION

The history of the kindergarten in America is the record of four sharply defined movements; the pioneer movement, whose point of departure was the city of Boston; the philanthropic movement, whose initial effort was made in the village of Florence, Mass., and whose greatest triumphs have been achieved in San Francisco; the national movement, which emanated from St. Louis; and the great maternal movement which, radiating from Chicago, is now spreading throughout the United States. The first of these movements called public attention to the several most important aspects of the Froebelian ideal; the second demonstrated the efficiency of the new education as a redemptive force; the third is making the kindergarten an integral part of the national school system; the fourth is evolving a more enlightened and consecrated motherhood and thereby strengthening the foundations and elevating the ideals of American family life.

In 1840 the first kindergarten was established by Friedrich Froebel at Blankenburg, Germany. Nineteen years later Miss Elizabeth Peabody of Boston became interested in Froebel's writings. In 1867 she went to Germany to study the kindergarten system. Returning to America in 1868 she devoted the remainder of her life to the propagation of Froebel's educational principles. Through her apostolic labors parents were inspired to seek the help of the kindergarten in the education of their children; philanthropists were incited to establish charity kindergartens; the Boston school board was persuaded to open an experimental kindergarten in one of its public schools and a periodical devoted to the elucidation and dissemination of Froebelian ideals was founded and sustained for four years. The pioneer movement, therefore, broke paths in the four directions of private,

public, philanthropic and literary work. Above all through the contagious power of devout enthusiasm it created the consecrated endeavor without which the kindergarten as Froebel conceived it can have no actual embodiment.

In 1872 an independent pioneer movement was begun in New York by Miss Henrietta Haines who invited Miss Boelte to conduct a kindergarten in her school for young ladies. Miss Boelte had studied three years with Froebel's widow, had won a high reputation in Germany, and later had done efficient work in England. About a year after her arrival in America she married Prof. John Kraus and established an independent kindergarten and normal class. Her normal work still continues and she is to-day the leading representative in America of the Froebel tradition. The power of her work results from her resolute adherence to all the details of the original Froebelian method. By this unswerving conformity she has kept alive, through their practical application, ideas which are of the highest importance to the theoretic development of the kindergarten system.

In 1874 Mr. S. H. Hill, of Florence, Mass., contributed funds to open the first charity kindergarten in the United States and later put in trust a sum sufficient to sustain and extend the work. Four years later a philanthropic movement was initiated in Boston by Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw, who for the ensuing fourteen years supported free kindergartens for poor children, these beneficent institutions reaching at one time to thirty in number. The influence of her noble example has doubtless conspired with other causes to create the one hundred and fifteen local associations which are now rendering efficient service to the Froebelian cause in different sections of the United States. Of such philanthropic associations the wealthiest and best organized is the Golden Gate association of San Francisco. At the time of its greatest prosperity this organization supported forty-one kindergartens; had given training to more than thirty thousand children; had received in endowments and other forms of contribution five hundred thousand dollars; and had pub

lished and distributed over eighty thousand annual reports. Unfortunately the financial depression of 1893 reduced its subscription list and at present it supports only twenty-three kindergartens. A training school for kindergartners is conducted under its auspices. Other associations deserving of special mention are the New York kindergarten association, which supports seventeen kindergartens, and whose aim is to provide for the children against whom the overcrowded public schools still close their doors; the Brooklyn association, which provides for sixteen kindergartens, and under whose auspices there were conducted during the past year one hundred and eighty-three mothers' meetings; the Pittsburgh and Allegheny free kindergarten association, which in six years has established twenty-eight kindergartens, with an enrollment of fourteen hundred children; the Cincinnati association, which supports twenty-four kindergartens; the Free kindergarten association of Chicago, which supports eighteen kindergartens and has a flourishing normal school; the Chicago Froebel association, whose president organized the first charity kindergarten in that city, and to the veteran leader of whose normal department is due in large measure the introduction of the kindergarten into the Chicago public schools; the Louisville association, which supports nine kindergartens, and has parents, nurses, Sunday school, boarding and normal departments.

Valuable as is the work accomplished by private kindergartens and kindergarten associations, it is necessarily a restricted work; and had the Froebelian movement developed only upon these lines the kindergarten must have remained forever the privilege of the wealthy few, and the occasional gift of charity to the abject poor. The public kindergarten opened in Boston, though carried on for several years, was finally given up upon the plea that the city. could not afford to appropriate funds to extend the system, and a second public kindergarten, which was opened in Brighton, Mass., in January, 1873, was abolished when Brighton was annexed to Boston in 1874. Meantime, however, Hon.

William T. Harris, the present United States commissioner of education, who was then superintendent of schools in St. Louis, had called attention to the kindergarten and suggested that experiments be made with a view to introducing into the public school such features of the system as might prove helpful in the education of children between the ages of four and six. The outcome of this suggestion was the opening of an experimental kindergarten in the fall of 1873. The work was approved by the school board; new kindergartens were opened as rapidly as competent directors could be prepared to take charge of them, and when Dr. Harris resigned his position as superintendent in 1880 the St. Louis kindergartens had an enrollment of 7,828 children and the system was so firmly established that it has since that time proved itself impregnable to all attack.

The experiment in St. Louis was a crucial one and had it failed it would have been difficult to prevail upon other cities to introduce the kindergarten into their public schools. There were many ready arguments against such an innovation: the argument from expense; the argument based on the tender age of kindergarten children; the argument that 'kindergartens would spoil the children and fill the primary grade with intractable pupils; the argument that only rarely endowed and, therefore, rarely to be found persons could successfully conduct a kindergarten. These arguments would have acquired irresistible force when confirmed by an abortive experiment. Dr. Harris steered the kindergarten cause through stormy waters to a safe harbor. He proved that the kindergarten could be made an integral part of the public school system. He reduced the annual expense to less than five dollars for each child. He called attention to the fact that the years between four and six were critical ones and that the needs of the child at this period were not provided for either by the family or the school. He convinced himself that children who had attended kindergartens conducted by competent directors did better on entering school than those who had received no such training, and the weight of

his authoritative statement gave other educators faith in the possibilities of the system. Finally, he proved that with wise training young women of average ability made satisfactory kindergartners. It was impossible to go on repeating that a thing could not be done in face of the fact that it had been done, and with the success of the experiment in St. Louis recognition of the kindergarten as the first stage of all public education became simply a matter of time.

The reasons which convinced Dr. Harris of the value of the kindergarten are stated in the following extract from his monograph entitled Early History of the Kindergarten in St. Louis, Mo.:

"If the school is to prepare especially for the arts and trades it is the kindergarten which is to accomplish the object, for the training of the muscles, if it is to be a training for special skill in manipulation, must be begun in early youth. As age advances it becomes more difficult to acquire new phases of manual dexterity. Two weeks' practice of holding objects in his right hand will make the infant in his first year right handed for life. The muscles yet in a pulpy consistency are very easily set in any fixed direction. The child trained for one year in Froebel's gifts and occupations will acquire a skillful use of his hand and the habit of accurate measurement of the eye, which will be his possession for life.

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"In the common school, drawing, which has obtained only a recent and precarious foothold in our course of study, is the only branch which is intended to cultivate skill in the hand and accuracy in the eye. The kindergarten, on the other hand, develops this by all its groups of gifts.

"Not only is this training of great importance by reason of the fact that most children must depend largely upon manual skill for their future livelihood, but from a broader point of view, we must value skill as the great potence which is emancipating the human race from drudgery by the aid of machinery. Inventions will free man from thraldom to time and space.

"By reason of the fact already adverted to, that a short training of certain muscles of the infant will be followed by